This invention relates in general to packaging machinery and deals more particularly with an improved single stick wrapping machine particularly adapted for wrapping sticks of gum.
In the gum packaging art, the development of improved high speed apparatus and methods for trimming and scoring gum slabs has created a need for improved high speed stick wrapping machinery for receiving and further processing trimmed prescored slabs delivered by such trimming and scoring mechanism. Gum stick packaging lines have heretofore generally included a gum stick breaking device which has its own conveying mechanism for advancing sticks separated by the breaking device to a transport mechanism associated with a stick wrapping machine. A typical breaking device of the aforedescribed general type is shown and described in U.S. Pat. 3,099,375 to Schoppee et al issued July 30, 1963. It is the general aim of the present invention to provide an improved single gum stick wrapping machine wherein a gum breaking mechanism comprises an integral part of the wrapping machine thereby reducing substantially the cost of producing such a machine and the factory floor space requirements necessary to accommodate it.